Business History: Useful Links

"This archive is dedicated to assisting faculty, students, and other researchers in their exploration of southwestern Ontario history and culture. This region is one of the oldest settled areas in Ontario and has a very rich history. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, the region was a hub for industrial development and an important area for the study of management/labour relations in Canada."

"This collection includes early Kingston newspapers (The British Whig, The Kingston Chronicle, and The Kingston Gazette), two abolitionist newspapers from Southern Ontario (The Provincial Freeman and The Voice of The Fugitive), and unique titles for topics such as Great Lakes shipping (The Marine Record) and visual sources for 19th century Canadian history (The Canadian Illustrated News)."

"This collection is a pilot project to digitize backfiles of community newspapers in Ontario."

Founded in 1996, the Internet Archive includes: texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages.

A scholarly organization seeks to disseminate information on the study of business history and to facilitate communication among scholars in this field. Look under Resources for information about books of interest, links to syllabi and reading lists, and a large list of relevant web links.

Includes entries for companies that maintain their own historical records, as well as for those that contract with consulting firms. Also included are archives of professional associations. Users may search by company or association, archivist, or U.S. state or Canadian province.

Made available in PDF by MIT Libraries, Listing Statements contains financials, prospectuses, and other reported information published in advance of new issues of a company's stock trading on the NYSE. Covering Vol. 1, 1884 through Vol. 172, 1945 (only Vol. 169 is missing).

Last updated in January 2014, this site is maintained in Amsterdam by the International Institute of Social History. Provides links to labour history institutions and collection and more.

This site provides manuscripts and printed books from the first industrial revolution period that can be searched for research into transformations in textile production, coal mining, and steam engines in the mechanization of industry.

"The Lehman Brothers Collection is not the comprehensive historical archive of Lehman Brothers, but rather a subset of materials selected from the company's historical record. The collection consists of two components: company deal book and business records."

"Hold more than 22,000 images of factories, equipment, techniques, processes, and people at work in industrial settings ranging from automobile plants to paper mills. Researchers will find photographs relating to U.S. industry as well as business operations in Central and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia."

Historical business periodicals covering 1867-1902. Part of HathiTrust Digital Library.

Various industries including: railroads, manufacturing, mining and miscellaneous companies, public utilities, corporate securities, etc. Available in HathiTrust Digital Library.

Description from UWO: "The Financial Post 500 is an annual listing of the top 500 largest Canadian corporations compiled by The Financial Post. Companies shown on the complete list are ranked on a descending basis by revenue and supplementary tables provide such things as lists by assets for mutual funds or, for example, the total number of lawyers when the list is ranking law firms. Originally the list consisted of only 300 companies, but has grown to the present day Financial Post FP 500. Information provided on the lists generally includes industry codes, head office location, revenue, profit, ticker and foreign ownership as well as a number of ratios."

Bronfman Business Library has paper collection of FP 500. Check Omni for call numbers. The most current year's rankings can be found at the Financial Post website.

"Funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 & 1955. It concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University."

Developed in response to requests regarding old mining companies and their stock certificates, this site contains information on reference books, links to U.S. state and Canadian provincial agencies responsible for company incorporations, links to commercial firms which will research old certificates for a fee, and links to scripophily dealers and organizations, which can provide information on collectible certificates.

Scripophily.com buys and sells collectible stock and bond certificates. It has a page on the origin of scripophily as a hobby, and characteristics that determine the value of an old certificate, including "age, signature, certificate owners name, rarity, demand for item, aesthetics, type of company, original face value, bankers associated with issuance, transfer stamps, cancellation markings, issued or unissued, printers.”

A page by Enoch Pratt Free Library, it offers an overview on how to research the value of an old stock certificate.